Category Archives for "P20 Talks"

Life Skills Educators from four continents gathered in Dublin, Ireland Sept 14th-16th for P20 Talks 2014 – the world’s only professional conference for Life Skills educators. Their mission? Illuminating the centrality of Life Skills in every avenue of human interaction and transforming the Life Skills educational process. Life Skills, as defined by Parenting 2.0, are

“Mandatory skills every human being learns in some measure to thrive individually and commune optimally with others.”

Examples include such critical arenas as financial and emotional literacy, fitness, time management and safety.

Traditionally, parents have been the primary educators of Life Skills – parents rarely formally educated themselves. The result is low competency levels passed generation to generation and crisis management dominating societal dialogue.

Twentieth century increases in dual parent employment, divorce, excessive academic expectations and geographical separations among extended family members have all placed unprecedented pressures upon a previously impoverished Life Skills educational process. Media headlines provide painfully real report cards daily for failing to embrace a more dynamic curriculum.

“Reliance on parents to teach human beings the wide array of skills they are guaranteed to need to succeed in the twenty-first century communicates a gross lack of appreciation for their complexity,” states Parenting 2.0 Founder Marlaine Cover.

P20 Talks is hosted by members of LinkedIn’s top ranked Parenting 2.0 group, which counts more than six thousand professionals in over eighty countries as members. Organizers alternate combined professional conferences in even years with regional gatherings in odd years. P20 Talks 2012 was held in San Diego, California USA, P20 Talks 2016 will be in Goa, India. The regional gatherings are spearheaded by Ambassadors for Parenting 2.0’s charitable educational organization – The Global Presence

When the stream began trickling for P20 Talks 2012 – the world’s first professional conference for Life Skills Educators – it was several months before our line up of Thought Leaders from multiple continents was confirmed. After announcing plans for P20 Talks 2014 earlier this month, presenter slots were filled within days.

Why the change?

Simple logic would credit the world class charm of our location – Dublin – and the prior success of P20 Talks 2012 in San Diego, California. Or the more than 100 Parenting 2.0 members stepping up to serve as Global Presence Ambassadors in 2013 and the book about our advocacy “Kissing the Mirror” becoming an amazon bestseller. Indeed, P20 professionals alternately cited all of these as factors when signing on.

But the most common reason people credited is logic not easily described. And truth be told I attempted writing about something entirely different this month to avoid the challenge…..

You can be courageous or you can be comfortable but you cannot be both. Brene Brown

Well… “To hell with comfort” once again..

Nearly every professional volunteering as a Thought Leader at P20 Talks 2014 – as well as those that served as Thought Leaders at P20 Talks 2012 – privately confided to me that they’d felt drawn recently to do “something” more. Not in an ego-based, agenda-driven way, just the opposite. Something simply larger than themselves, something undescribable was calling. One woman said she quite literally felt “pulled,” another described the sensation as “someone pushing her back..”

I get it. I feel the same…….sucked in by something larger than me, something that would be as difficult to resist as breathing….

Something I have come to call the “The Flow of P20.”

The Flow of P20 has a power of its own, an energy greater than the sum of its parts. While some credit me for initiating it – due to my role as founder – the truth is I am just the same as everyone else, one trickle absorbed and moved along by a larger, loving river of consciousness.

The good news is that when we succumb, when we relinquish the need to take charge and direct, life begins to flow in and support us with equal ease – connections that somehow previously eluded us become everyday occurrences. Long-time host of “Full Power Living,” Ilene Dillon, spoke to the dynamic when she publicly confided the following after signing on for P20 Talks 2014, “I’ve recently been making friends in Ireland – never before happened in 70 years!”

So this is the greater logic, uncommonly explored or acknowledged while it may presently be: When human beings step out selflessly in service to their fellow man, life miraculously steps in to support them in exponential measure.

Thank you Parenting 2.0 for this phenomenal education!

Editor’s note: P20 Talks 2014 will be held in Dublin, Ireland Sept 14th-16th. Early registration begins May 1st. Discounted hotel rates will accompany early registration.

Every human being ever born arrives hard-wired with two assignments – thriving and communing optimally with others. Free will does not mean you choose these assignments, merely the amount of suffering you and others endure until you acquire better skills.

People who excel in this Mandatory Curriculum are our Curriculum Scholars. Nelson Mandela, who made the great transition at the age of 95 on Dec 5th, 2013, is one of humanity’s finest. Mandela not only thrived personally despite obstacles that would have left others disillusioned and embittered, he empowered millions of others to thrive also.

My eldest daughter, Ari Cover, emailed me a photo of her swearing in as a lawyer in the state of California on the same day Mandela passed. The reminder that new Curriculum Scholars begin their humble journeys daily comforted me as I contemplated the capacity for others to carry Mandela’s torch forward.

A few days later I underwent a highly recommended diagnostic procedure. Emotion imprints memory so if you’ve ever had a colonoscopy, no further description regarding the setting for what I will share next is necessary. If not, picture yourself in a hospital bed; needles and wires taped to multiple points on your skin, hospital “blues” covering about as much of your backside as a baby’s bib, and dozens of glowing people bustling about with smiling faces – because, after all, they engage in this extreme level of human care dozens of times daily.

In discussing prior hospital visits with one luminous nurse, Jenna, she shared with me that she was the mother of twins. Without my prompting, she added that one of her sons had a higher than average aptitude for reading, the other below average. Her anxiety about this single skill being purported to determine her sons’ adult success – understandable given the US constructs prisons based on third grade reading levels – grated against her higher intelligence.

I applauded her intuition and reassured her that, “Human beings Mandatory Curriculum – more important than reading – is feeling competent among and engaged with peers. Prioritizing this, throughout every educational process independent individual learning curves, delivers success.” Jenna’s eyes sparkled with unintended tears and she replied, with a renewed fire burning in her voice, “I would love to get a group of people together to discuss this.”

Not only was Jenna wholly unaware of my day job as Founder of Parenting 2.0 – supporting more than 3500 members in over 65 countries doing precisely that daily – she was also unaware of my feeling that I was flailing in my role as torch bearer.

For our second annual professional conference, P20 Talks 2013, over 100 Ambassadors were invited to organize regional gatherings. I’d signed on to host one in my new city of Corvallis, Oregon. Yet here it was mid-December and – thanks to the combination of attending other’s events, record freezing regional temps, icy roads and snow – I’d yet to do so.

I often coach others in the importance of keeping the faith even when all odds seem against you. “Human beings are not the exception to all creation”, I remind them, “it is a benevolent universe and it will support you in surprising ways when you step out in faith and serve others.” Indeed it does. Indeed it does.

If you were fortunate to learn to read as a child, The Emperor’s New Clothes is likely one story you remember. Hans Christian Andersen’s 1800’s adaptation tells of a vain King who falls prey to swindlers that create a robe they describe as “invisible to stupid and incompetent people.” Pride and fear prevent the King and other adults from acknowledging that the fabric – in fact – does not exist. Only when His Royal Highness marches in a public procession, does a small child declare “He isn’t wearing anything.”

Suffice to say, a fairy tale about an Emperor strutting around naked has a way of sticking in a kid’s memory. The elements of a fearful populace and an arrogant ruler are also tragically accurately descriptive of governing bodies not simply past but also present.

What shocks me most today, as swaddled, dead babies blanket hospital floors in Syria, terrorists shoot shoppers at a Nairobi mall, and the United States ticks off Cinderella hours to a governmental shut down, is the blind eye human beings around the planet continue to turn to reality.

You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.

Albert Einstein

Conflict resolution is the one skill every person needs throughout their lives – more times than they will dress themselves.

So how do we prepare children and teens to excel in this critical arena?

Role modeling.

Despite ample evidence confirming that this educational method – consistently cited as the high bar of performance in parenting – perpetuates systemic problems rather than alleviates them, we turn a blind eye to the facts, parade in the robes of vanity, and sell the – so porous as to be wholly vacuous – “fabric of society” to generation upon generation.

The good news, as the voice of the child in The Emperor’s Clothes so beautifully illuminates, is we do not need to be either the most powerful or the most numerous to effect change. We simply need to be courageous and state the truth publicly and plainly. Doing so is the commitment of Parenting 2.0.

Editor’s Note: This blog is dedicated to the more than 100 Global Presence Ambassadors promoting a new paradigm for Life Skills Education by hosting regional gatherings around the planet for P20 Talks 2013.

Last month I violated one of the most sacred tenants of bloggers – consistency. I failed to post a blog for July entirely. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I can chastise myself for maintaining an end of the month posting schedule, or credit the unanticipated surprises and demands of transitioning from a home in California to a cabin in Oregon.

But the truth, if I am completely honest, is something far more chronic. The truth is I am enormously – indeed spiritually – conflicted every single time I compose a blog.

Not for lack of something to say. As everyone who knows me personally will be happy to confirm, I am intensely passionate engaging in two-way conversation regarding the importance of humanity embracing a more proactive educational process for Life Skills. I am conflicted because I am brutally aware that, by blogging, I am adding to the avalanche of unidirectional information that assaults individuals daily – the avalanche that, mere survival mandates, human beings respond to with a deaf ear.

As I shared in my introduction to P20 Talks 2012 – “Life Skills Educators market themselves primarily independently. And what happens with that is it is like going to the symphony and having every instrument play its own song. People aren’t going to the symphony. Parents aren’t listening. Critical resources are getting buried, life-altering resources.”

I write today not because I am no longer pained, but because I am pained more deeply. I am pained by news headlines that celebrate the fifty-year anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have A Dream” speech alongside discussions of chemical attacks and international warfare. I am pained by the fact that an even greater war, fought not on streets or battle fields but within homes, delivers epic silent suffering and death daily.

The day will come, when after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world we shall have discovered fire.” Pierre Teillard de Chardin

I write today, because we too have a dream..a dream of a time when human beings everywhere embrace third party wisdom for the skills necessary to succeed in the mandatory curriculum of communing with others. A dream of a time when children learn not merely the three R’s, reading, writing, and arithmetic but also the three C’s, concern, compassion and conflict resolution.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before improving the world. Anne Frank

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the word family in the US conjured up a visual of mom, dad and two and a half biological children. Yes the half was always a bit challenging – and good preparation for the definition of “family” today. Ask any person on the street to describe their “family” and you will get a myriad of additional responses: “single parent homes,” “step parents and step children”, “adopted children,” “foster children,” and “same gender parents.”

As complexity increases so too do the challenges. When not properly respected and proactively addressed, family problems become societal problems. No one lives in isolation. If a neighbor’s child struggles and ends up committing a crime, your taxes will be utilized to prosecute that child. Every adult – whether a parent or not – has a role in raising humanity.

Consequently, families today are attracting heightened press and societal attention. Bright lights do not only reveal the problems you seek to find, they expose issues long hidden. “Do as your parents did unto you” and “Children learn what they live” are now revealed as the impossibly, impoverished educational paradigms they have been for decades. Institutions that previously processed human beings like so many crayons in a box – shunning those whose uniqueness challenged their constructs – are cracking. Child abuse, molestation, poverty, human trafficking and starvation, can no longer be written off as “someone else’s problem”.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming. Helen Keller

All of this brings us to the one constant. Regardless ever changing cultural norms and composition, families are universal and remain a primary classroom for children. Their success around the planet is critical to all of us. So thank goodness for the passionate ones, the courageous, the can-do, the caring – people like Rhonda Sciortino. Rhonda endured severe poverty and physical abuse as a child and today teaches others to “Succeed because of what you’ve been through.”

As Rhonda and others who have travelled the journey over centuries have learned – and modern work in neuroscience and trauma now confirm – far from being “forever damaged” human beings are only as limited as their educators. Life skills benefit from the same things as academics: wisdom of third party instructors optimistic of children’s success, practice over years, and appreciation that failure is an essential part of any learning process. Children who take the harder classes in the mandatory curriculum of surviving and communing with others, and have exceptional teachers, end up becoming humanity’s curriculum scholars.

What do you call it when life exceeds your greatest fantasy? At Parenting 2.o we call her Bobbi DePorter. Haven’t heard of Bobbi previously? Don’t feel bad because we have you beat by a kilometer in the humble pie department. Bobbi DePorter is one of the most accomplished Life Skills Educators in the history of humanity. Think I am exaggerating? Permit me to elaborate.

Bobbi founded something called Super Camp roughly thirty years ago to teach teens interpersonal communication and other Life Skills they were not learning at home or in schools. Since that time she, her husband Joe Chapon, and her amazing staff at Quantum Learning Network educated millions – yes millions – of teens in more than twenty countries and published also multiple books on the topic of Life Skills.

While numerous organizations focus on non-academic skill development, Bobbi has proven herself a rare pioneer by proudly embracing the phrase “Life Skills” in all of QLN’s promotional and educational materials. Why? Because Bobbi DePorter possesses a keen appreciation for the role of Life Skills in human beings thriving – not simply surviving.

Despite being a decades long Life Skills activist myself, I didn’t learn about Bobbi and her exceptional achievements until this summer when she was interviewed by one of our Parenting 2.0 members for a webinar series. So much for believing I was on top of Life Skills around the world via Google Alerts! As if learning about Bobbi and her phenomenal contributions in the Life Skills arena was not sufficiently humbling, I discovered she and I are also – by sheer coincidence – San Diego County (California, USA) neighbors. Suffice to say sometimes life delivers you a dollop of humble to grace your humble pie.

When you meet Bobbi DePorter in person you understand a bit better how she can have accomplished as much as she has, yet remained under the headlines. Like so many high achieving individuals that dedicate their lives to serving others, Bobbi is refreshingly humble, gracious, and soft spoken. There is, however, another variable that warrants our attention. Absent a more established social platform – as we have for academic teachers – Life Skills Educators are forced to function primarily independently.

Changing this fact, and giving Bobbi and thousands of other Life Skills Educators a more solidified public platform to harmonize and collectively influence public discourse, was the stated mission for holding our first P20 Talks Conference. Today, I am proud to say that Bobbi, and dozens of other P20 humanitarians who travelled across land and sea to serve as Thought Leaders at P20 Talks, carried Life Skills a giant leap forward. Held in San Diego, CA August 16th-18th 2012, P20 Talks achieved multiple historic firsts by:

Providing Life Skills Educators the opportunity to present with peers within their own specific Life Skills subject area.

Proving, through sharing of personal stories, that Life Skills are not merely important, they are – in fact – sacred seeds for personal transformation when properly appreciated.

Next month I will begin discussing these P20 Talks historic firsts in greater detail. Today, however, our collective praise and gratitude goes purely and most deservedly to Bobbi DePorter for the privilege of awarding her our first Parenting 2.0 Global Presence Humanitarian Award.

As London hosts the summer Olympics of 2012, and athletes from around the globe awe millions with their heroic strength and courage, history of another type is being made as humanitarians gather for the first Parenting 2.0 “P20 Talks” Conference in San Diego, Ca. Hailing from four continents, more than fifty Life Skills Educators are congregating at the Hacienda Hotel in historic Old Town, August 16th-18th, and unveiling an Olympic sized shift for raising humanity in the twenty-first century.

P20 Talks expands dramatically on prior child-rearing paradigms by:

Highlighting the relationship between societal ills and impoverished Life Skills educational processes.

Acknowledging every adult’s role in raising future generations.

Illuminating Life Skills as distinct and unique skill sets foundational to thriving.

Advocating proactive education by third party educators.

Easing parents’ access to valuable resources.

The highlight of P20 Talks will be the birth of an international, grassroots, volunteer organization called The Global Presence. The Global Presence will provide three primary service paths:

Unification of Life Skills Educators through formation of a professional Guild.

Creation of an objective rating system for critical Life Skills Resources.

Formation of Global Presence Educational Centers in communities around the world.

P20 Talks proves Olympic flames and feats come in many forms – and few are more signficant than those where the few illuminate the many.

The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire!Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

This week American media clamored to cover the guilty verdict of one of the United States most notorious child molesters, ex Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, and adults everywhere celebrated. Only when these same adults heed this call to educate all young children on how to protect themselves against child molesters, however, will they embrace the greater victory.

“Limits of tyrants are determined by those whom they oppress” Frederick Douglass brilliantly proclaimed. Children are regularly taught to stop, drop, and role, in the event their clothing catches fire, but the tragic truth is they are more likely to be the victim of molestation by someone they know.

One out of four females in the US, and one out of six males, is molested before the age of 18. This need not be. Education is key. It is time for those who truly care about children to take Life Skills out of parental junk drawers and illuminate them as distinct and critical skill sets – skill sets teachable by third party educators. On August 16th-18th, P20 is rising to the challenge by holding its first P20 Talks Conference in San Diego, CA. Make no mistake, if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. Every adult has a role in “Raising Humanity.” Be the Change. Register today.

Music is much like humor, that which is heavenly to one individual can be tortuous to another. Bob Dylan was popular when I was young. I, however, pretty much classified his music as “Songs by which to hang oneself.” Then one weekend I took a road trip in a VW van from Seattle, Washington to Calgary, Alberta for a family wedding. The only radio station we could get in those (pre-Wi Fi in the palm of your hands) days was airing a weekend long Dylan tribute. My first thought was “Who needs a noose, the trip alone will kill me.”

Me of little faith. By the end of the fifteen hour drive I’d broken through whatever boundaries of space and time divide the intolerable from the divine and was a very much still alive Dylan fan. Fast forward thirty years and I hear Leonard Cohen singing “Anthem” for the first time. Cohen’s (Darth Vader mimics Johnny Cash) delivery makes Dylan sound like Mary Poppins. Fortunately, I was attuned to finding symphonies where I’d previously prayed for silence.

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

I recalled Cohen’s prophetic verse this morning during a conference call with Thought Leaders for our P20 Talks August 2012 Conference. https://www.parenting2pt0.org One lovely woman, Deborah McNellis, was describing how children are like the paper snowflakes they create – each unique yet all of them equal – and the importance of seeing wholeness through the holes. Want though parents do for their children to have happy, peaceful, productive lives, some of their most valuable life experiences will come from surviving the seemingly intolerable – when paper thin perceptions of self give way to awareness of that which is infinite and glorious. So where does all of this leave those of us nurturing a more holistic and dynamic narrative for raising humanity? Embracing humility.